‘No war’ for Sweden is only defined in terms of not declaring war on another country; Sweden has still sent soldiers to Congo, Afghanistan and Libya to take part in military action in more recent times: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Swedish_wars
There is a big difference between being at war and sending peace keeping troops. Defining the use of military in an area to prevent further violence and war as being at war is very wrong.
The author has stated[1] that the names of the countries were excluded for consideration in the choice of most frequent word.
@atsaloti "New" really should have been excluded as the most frequent word. It appears a lot in the names of New Guinea, New South Wales, New Holland... It would be interesting to know what word came afterwards in frequency.
I think this map highlights some fundamental flaw with wikipedia or what we highlight in history or something similar to this.
Or possibly it's a perfect example of what is wrong with summarising a complicated entity. I hope in the future that people will move away from the Top Ten things about X or the 5 things you need to know about Y.
It'd probably be better if it used a better measure than raw term frequency in the articles. For example, most of Europe is "War". If it used something like inverse document frequency (tf-idf) to rank the terms, it might get more distinct words for each country.
That sounds like a great idea. I hope the original poster picks up on your idea. Although that may still leave some of the offensive terms listed elsewhere in the comments (Kuwait <- Iraq, Ethiopia <- Eritrea)
That might be so if your goal is to hilight what sets the countries apart.
The author of the map chose for 'history of __' as the topic. And when doing that with countries it is not surprising to find that countries are defined by war, nobility, imperialism and rivalry.
We like to think countries are formed because of their people, and their culture, but in reality countries are formed because of their resources, defendability and their interested parties.
If there is one thing that defines borders in europe, it is war, and this map shows that quite laconically :)
I was hoping for more words when you zoomed, like a hierarchical wordle, but I realise that that was not the purpose of the map. Interesting way to get students thinking about history.
Yeah, I'd be interested in doing an associative version of this (sort of like what we did for this[1]), though my mapping skills are not quite up to the author's/
Seems to me that your second idea is probably pretty accurate. History books (general purpose ones, that is) cover wars extensively. On the one hand, wars cause rapid and massive political and social changes, so they are obviously very important to understanding history. But at the same time, understanding what caused a war, what the political and social aftermath looked like, and the cultural perceptions of the war are also extremely important. Not to mention all the non-war history. So there is probably a good argument that history books focus too heavily on wars. So it is not surprising that Wikipedia would also focus heavily (perhaps too heavily) on wars.
> But at the same time, understanding what caused a war, what the political and social aftermath looked like, and the cultural perceptions of the war are also extremely important.
And those paragraphs will contain the word "war" many times.
I suspect if you had lived though a significant war you would probably think history was overly focused on social changes and should spend more time on technology and tactics.
Even the people who lived through actual battles (where technology and tactics would be relevant) tend to tell stories that are mostly about hunger, deprivation and being cold. Shooting people and executing strategic plans hardly ever figure in them.
And this makes sense: most soldiers spend most of their time waiting around for battles or marching from one battle to the next. The actual battles themselves take up very little of their time (even if they're extremely stressful).
The stories of those that lived through wars as civilians (the vast majority of people) of course never talk about technology and tactics as they had nothing to do with them.
War is often vary 'hands on' for at least one civilian population. Did William Tecumseh Sherman decide to burn your barn? Well now you care about tactics.
But you're still not likely to tell stories of the battlefield tactics and grand strategy that led to the burning of your barn, but rather than deprivation and hardship that not having that barn caused.
I guess there's a few reasons why. A big reason for learning history is learning from exceptional events, and wars are exceptional. Learning how to avoid them (if possible) and win them (if necessary) isn't something you want each generation to learn by trial and error.
Also, wars are kind of interesting. A good guy (us) and bad guy (them) is a fail-proof way to make a story mildly interesting.
I guess there's other lessons we should learn from history (as opposed to trial and error, or observation). Political systems are a good one - there's things we could learn from the Greeks which could apply today (like sortition, as a way to stop career politicians getting too powerful, but still giving the decision makers enough power that they have an incentive to properly study the issue). We could also learn about dealing with natural disasters, resource exploitation, and the history of moral panics.
The entry for Eritrea shows that the word "Ethiopia" comes up a lot in the wikipedia article "History of Eritrea". Given the history of the two countries, that's to be expected. What exactly are you taking offence at?
Mainland China would most definitely not be happy with this label. The government that was exiled to what we call Taiwan considers themselves to be the legitimate government of China. The mainland government considers them to be illegitimate. This tension still exists politically and culturally.
I have had many Taiwanese friends young and old and most of them prefer themselves and their culture to be referred to as Chinese.
I have also had some young (mainland) Chinese friends and they, too, are still very aware of the situation. Even though some of them have Taiwanese friends themselves, they still look with disdain on Taiwan/RoC as a political entity.
I visited China about a year ago and was on a train when a local started talking to me. He asked why I was there and what cities I've seen, mainly small talk. I had lived in Taiwan for about a year prior so when he told me I should live in China I said, "well, I lived in Taiwan for a year". His face went cold and his tone became somewhat ominous. His response was "Taiwan IS China" and in a threatening manner said "RIGHT?". That really made an impression on me. The Taiwanese people don't consider themselves part of China, but would someday like to see the ROC regain control of continental China. When they think of China they think of the People's Republic of China, the communist China.
I would bet that if you did this same things with many history books, similar words would come up, but I do not think that it is a fair summary.
It would be more interesting to see the most searched Google queries coming from these countries (assuming that many use Google). Finland is Ilta Sanomat (The Evening News), for example: http://www.google.com/zeitgeist/2012/#the-world
Unfortunately, Antarctica is not represented in Google Zeitgeist, nor are many others, but perhaps you could contact Google for that data.
Spend enough on Adwords or google appss and you get a dedicated rep. Buy a nexus and you get a 24/7 phone number. Post something about google virtually anywhere on the Internet and Matt Cutts will probably reply to it.
It's interesting how Nicaragua is "defined" by a family name (Somoza). Other family names I see include Kim for North Korea and Khaan for Mongolia. They're all analogous to Dynasty for China.
I'd love to see the results for other text queries. E.g. use the cuisine of X range of articles as a source. Maybe filter the results to only include actual foodstuffs. The typography is completely custom, though, so there's no way to automate the process.
That's what many people say - but on the other way, that's how I make my living! And surprisingly, it works (it's not $9.99 per wallpaper, as you might think - it's for entire account, unlocking everything I have to offer).
Yes I thought you might say that. But I personally feel like this is a psychological issue - I am quite unwilling to pay 9.99 for an account, to get access to all the stuff you make(no offense, I think your art is great). I like this wallpaper, I want it now,and I would be more than happy to pay a single-time fee for it - 1.99,2.99 or even 4.99 - that would be psychologically easier to stomach than getting an entire account made,which I don't want or need.
Eh... I'm from Malta. Representative or not, I'm thinking "a" or "I" might be the only words which fit there...
Reminds me of a department manager who insisted everybody place a push pin on a world map he hung up in the office, to show where everybody was originally from. I obliterated my own country in so doing. After that most people assumed I was born on a cruise ship or something...
As confronting as it is, most of these seem to me spot on. Most of European history is indeed about war. Most of the African and Asian history that is written about is indeed about who colonized what.
It's a great map: it provides an easily digestible visualization of the limitations of history writing.
This would be an amazing demonstration of cultural relativism.
You used the "en.wikipedia.org" site for the source. Good. Now put a loop around the whole thing, and after you're done making the English-"history-of ____" map (which you have just done), repeat with the French - "history of___ map", and so forth for every language that has entries (some may be blank for some countries).
Next, you can take your 40-80 or whatever maps (whichever languages you decided to complete this for), and translate them via automated translation into English.
So, we get "the different language Wikipedia's different views of the world", with English (untranslated) being only the first source, and additional sources both native and translated directly into English.
For example, while for Russia, "soviet" won out from the English-language
The comments seem to prove why the map is useful. What would you like your countries word to be? Work to that end. Or find a word you like and emigrate.
86 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 157 ms ] threadOnly "eponymous" label is for Hungary. The country correctly self-identifies in term-frequency ;-)
Most poetic definitions:
New Zealand: Maori.
North Korea: Kim.
Saudi Arabia: Oil.
Somalia: Government .. LOL!
* Bessarabia (an old name for the region where current day Moldova is)
* Moravia (an important region in Czech republic)
* Transsylvania (central Romania)
...most of those with country names are actually not in the countries themselves:
* Hungary in Slovakia
* Iraq in Kuwait
* India in Pakistan
* Ethiopia in Eritrea
* Albanian in Kosovo
* And of course British, Frech, Portuguese, Spanish and Soviet all over the place.
Also interesting is Sweden, though our history certainly was defined by war we are only two years away from reaching 200 years of no war.
I'd say it's right on the mark.
@atsaloti "New" really should have been excluded as the most frequent word. It appears a lot in the names of New Guinea, New South Wales, New Holland... It would be interesting to know what word came afterwards in frequency.
[1] http://www.flickr.com/photos/omnitarian/8288065763/sizes/o/i...
Or possibly it's a perfect example of what is wrong with summarising a complicated entity. I hope in the future that people will move away from the Top Ten things about X or the 5 things you need to know about Y.
This map is ignorance presenting as a summary.
(Yes I know it's meant to be a cute map)
The author of the map chose for 'history of __' as the topic. And when doing that with countries it is not surprising to find that countries are defined by war, nobility, imperialism and rivalry.
We like to think countries are formed because of their people, and their culture, but in reality countries are formed because of their resources, defendability and their interested parties.
If there is one thing that defines borders in europe, it is war, and this map shows that quite laconically :)
[1] http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-real-stuff-white-peopl...
And those paragraphs will contain the word "war" many times.
And this makes sense: most soldiers spend most of their time waiting around for battles or marching from one battle to the next. The actual battles themselves take up very little of their time (even if they're extremely stressful).
The stories of those that lived through wars as civilians (the vast majority of people) of course never talk about technology and tactics as they had nothing to do with them.
Also, wars are kind of interesting. A good guy (us) and bad guy (them) is a fail-proof way to make a story mildly interesting.
I guess there's other lessons we should learn from history (as opposed to trial and error, or observation). Political systems are a good one - there's things we could learn from the Greeks which could apply today (like sortition, as a way to stop career politicians getting too powerful, but still giving the decision makers enough power that they have an incentive to properly study the issue). We could also learn about dealing with natural disasters, resource exploitation, and the history of moral panics.
And the good guys always win! (or the winners are the ones who are left to call themselves the good guys)
I have had many Taiwanese friends young and old and most of them prefer themselves and their culture to be referred to as Chinese.
I have also had some young (mainland) Chinese friends and they, too, are still very aware of the situation. Even though some of them have Taiwanese friends themselves, they still look with disdain on Taiwan/RoC as a political entity.
It would be more interesting to see the most searched Google queries coming from these countries (assuming that many use Google). Finland is Ilta Sanomat (The Evening News), for example: http://www.google.com/zeitgeist/2012/#the-world
Unfortunately, Antarctica is not represented in Google Zeitgeist, nor are many others, but perhaps you could contact Google for that data.
you could contact google
could contact google
contact google
I don't think anyone has ever found a way to do it, other than through a court order or by applying for a job.
Stop spreading this nonsense meme.
Decent idea, terrible implementation.
So it makes sense :-)
Reminds me of a department manager who insisted everybody place a push pin on a world map he hung up in the office, to show where everybody was originally from. I obliterated my own country in so doing. After that most people assumed I was born on a cruise ship or something...
It's a great map: it provides an easily digestible visualization of the limitations of history writing.
You used the "en.wikipedia.org" site for the source. Good. Now put a loop around the whole thing, and after you're done making the English-"history-of ____" map (which you have just done), repeat with the French - "history of___ map", and so forth for every language that has entries (some may be blank for some countries).
Next, you can take your 40-80 or whatever maps (whichever languages you decided to complete this for), and translate them via automated translation into English.
So, we get "the different language Wikipedia's different views of the world", with English (untranslated) being only the first source, and additional sources both native and translated directly into English.
For example, while for Russia, "soviet" won out from the English-language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Russia
going from http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%98%D1%81%D1%82%D0%BE%D1%80%... (by clicking "Russian" on the interwiki link on the left) I would be interested in what the most common word is on THAT page :).
This would be an awesome example of cultural relativism.
No surprises here.
In case of Russian language doing it properly is noticeably harder because Russian is an inflected language.